Kyocera Rise (Sprint)

The 3.5-inch display on the Kyocera Rise features 480-by-320-pixel resolution, which is standard among low-end phones, but looks particularly bad here. Text and images look jagged, and there's a faint vertical pattern running across the entire display that becomes apparent the more you move the phone around.

The Rise slides open to reveal a four-row QWERTY keyboard. The keys are large and slightly raised, though the top row is a bit too close to the edge of the display for comfort. Still, it's a decent keyboard and easy to type long messages.

The Rise's 3.2-megapixel camera comes with an LED flash but lacks autofocus. It snaps photos quickly, in just 0.3 seconds, but quality is poor.

The Rise is running Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), which is a relatively new version of the OS.